SoapBox Productions and Organizing's affiliate podcast pairs critical analyses of media, culture, politics, and everyday happenings with the tastiest of spirits. With the occasional help of Chicago’s most talented and creative activists, filmmakers, academics, and social entrepreneurs, BrownTown (friends and SoapBox colleagues Caullen Hudson and David A. Moran) unpacks current events, social issues, and gives personal insight into various topics. Find more at SoapBoxPO.com/podcast. Follow @SoapBoxPO and #BourbonNBrownTown on all social media.

“Beezy” is a first-generation Pakistani who grew up on the North side of Chicago near Foster and Damen. He currently works in financial services at an asset management firm, essentially “playing in excel all day.” He once lived with both Caullen and David at an apartment then-newly formed as “BrownTown.” The rest is history…

Since the first ever Bourbon ’n BrownTown recording on the same topic in April 2017, we have witnessed new works in TV, film, music, literature, and other art forms that present an unapologetic, nuanced, multidimensional look at Black and Brown life in America and abroad. BrownTown understands a conversation of this sort can go many ways, incorporating many worldviews. For this episode, they primarily use their personal experiences as Black, Mexican, and Pakistani men to analyze the content and impact of more mainstream projects and media events over the past year. As buzzwords “diversity”, “representation,” and “inclusion” are employed more than ever in media, business, and politics (no exception here), BrownTown dissects where these themes operate, when they can be problematic, and, most importantly, how they can be liberatory in implementation to not only better represent our current social world but what is possible.

BrownTown starts by welcoming and getting audiences acquainted with the little-known third member Beezy. Right off the bat, they get into comparing sending petty work emails to communicating with internet trolls and the difference between racism and racial prejudice amongst marginalized peoples. As Beezy opens up about his upbringing, it helps us understand his perspective regarding pop culture and interactions with diverse groups of people as a young adult. Piggybacking off of a conversation on Black Panther in the Hip Hop 2.0 episode, the gang dives into the takeaways of the film, both within the story itself and the broader cultural impact. From here, Caullen pivots to the Black actors’ struggles to obtain certain “color-blind” roles only after a years of work and validation by mainstream white audiences. David champions the authenticity and underlying message of the animated film Coco as well as the importance of accessible language in film, TV, and comedy. When Beezy positions himself as “anti-woke,” him and Caullen explain how Hasan Minaj’s comedy can be both entertaining to broad audiences, educational with a poignant agenda, as well as culturally relevant to Indian/Pakistani peoples in a way other comedians are not (Do you know what a lota is? Watch this.).